🏁 Up next
Austria
FP110d 18h
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella says Ferrari now has Formula 1’s best chassis after Lewis Hamilton won the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix with the team’s upgraded SF-26. Stella said: "I think this race gives us very clear indications. I think these indications are that Ferrari, at the moment, is the car with the best chassis. We see in the middle sector, especially in the medium-speed corner, that Ferrari is the fastest in the corners, not necessarily the fastest in the straights."
Lando Norris says Ferrari would be “dominating” Formula 1 if they had a better engine, after Lewis Hamilton took the Scuderia’s first win of the season at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix. Lando Norris said: "We're lucky that Ferrari don't have a better engine at the minute. If they had a better engine they're dominating. They're the class of the field in terms of cornering performance at the minute and we're not even close to them. It's the realistic point of it, we're a long, long way from where we need to be. If they make improvements on the engine side, then they'll embarrass everyone."
Lewis Hamilton says his fans "rescued" him from a "dark place" during a difficult first season with Ferrari, after taking his first win for the team at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix. Hamilton said: "It was really the fans that rescued me. Last year several of the fans were shouting to me: 'Don't forget who you are.' That really resonated with me, and I had to question how do I find myself again? How do I centre? How do I find the courage and the strength to keep going, keep building and keep trying?"
Charles Leclerc said he was forced to retire from the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix with three laps remaining after a power-steering failure, which he said was followed by the loss of gears and brakes. Leclerc said: "Yeah, I lost the power steering. Oh no, no [I could not have continued without power steering]. I had no gears, and I had no brakes as well, so it would have been tough."
Lewis Hamilton says he carried an injury through last season after a “big crash” at the Circuit de Catalunya, speaking after winning yesterday’s race there for Ferrari. Hamilton said: "I trained very, very, hard this year. Last year was difficult from the beginning because I got injured here, actually, a big crash that I had here last year and I was carrying that injury through the whole year which was really really difficult."
Andrea Stella said McLaren have “raised the bar” on reliability after Lando Norris returned to the podium at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, but added the team still have “quite a lot to improve” on performance. Stella said: "It’s good that we haven’t had any issues here in Spain. We have definitely raised the bar, the level of attention, and used situations we had in the previous races to reset and increase the standards in the way we do things. We need to retain these standards, the mission is very clear – we only want to think about performance, an area of performance in which we also have quite a lot to improve."
Charles Leclerc says it is “up to me to up my game” after a disappointing Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix in which he retired with a car issue as his team-mate Lewis Hamilton won by almost 20 seconds. Charles Leclerc said: "Now it's up to me to up my game, to find this confidence with this car to put everything together. Hopefully, with clean weekends; it is true also that the last four weekends haven't been very clean technically for me. We have had a lot of issues, so I'm just looking forward to having clean races, taking the rhythm again, and hopefully, fighting at the front as well."
George Russell said he will focus on “controlling my controllables” and making improvements after losing victory from pole position with second place at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix. Russell said: "I'm thinking about just controlling my controllables. Friday and Saturday I felt like I did everything to the best of my ability and got absolutely the best result possible on almost every single lap I did. Today I made a great start. The first stint was solid, but the last two stints on the hard wasn't good enough, so my head is coming out of this race thinking the performance was not strong enough, and I need to make some improvements."
Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur said Lewis Hamilton was “very outstanding” in his Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix win and warned Ferrari against getting carried away as they head to Austria. Vasseur said: "Today he was managing the situation very well – as soon as we were adjusting the strategy, he was pushing more or less. He was very outstanding today. We also have to stay calm – it's not like last week we were nowhere and today we are World Champions. That would be a huge mistake. It means that we need to keep the same approach in Austria as in Barcelona."
Fred Vasseur says Ferrari must stay calm after Lewis Hamilton won the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix to deliver the team’s first victory since the seven-time champion joined last year. Vasseur said: "Nothing changed today compared to last week. The result is different, the outcome of the race is different. The commitment of the guys in the garage in Maranello, from Lewis, from Charles, didn't change compared to last week. We have to stay calm with this. It's not that today everything is magic, and last week it was not."
Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur said Lewis Hamilton would still have won the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix even without the late Virtual Safety Car that followed Fernando Alonso’s retirement with a battery issue. Vasseur said: "We would have won the race, perhaps with a bit less. But we were also in a good situation with a fresh set of tyres at this stage. It was positive for us, but I don't want to do the calculation what would have been in the race with this or this. But I think we were already in a very good situation."
"I'd rather not fight with him for a title, because I know what he's capable of. If he smells blood, he goes. I've seen it many years where suddenly the Lewis Hamilton train started to go and then it's very difficult to stop it."
Lando Norris said McLaren need “a little bit of everything” to start beating Mercedes and Ferrari after being beaten by both teams in the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix. Norris said: "Ah, just a little bit of everything at the minute. We're doing a good job as a team, and I think we're making good progress, but these guys are just doing a better job. So, we have to give credit to them and admit to ourselves that we've got to keep working hard and keep putting in the effort."
Get the full feed, faster alerts, and the stories worth following on your phone.
